Developing and distributing original branded flash games has proven itself to be an innovative way to drive countless new visitors to your website. Games display your brand name throughout play-time; the brand will usually appear as a link at the bottom of the game window, but it could show up as merely a logo.
Some aspiring webmasters develop original, branded games for their own sites while other webmasters pay flash game developers to just customize whatever the webmaster likes out of their collection. The flash game developer might customize the same game for several websites, leading to a ubiquitous presence of the game online - each with a different brand on display.
Webmasters pay for flash games because visitors remain on the site for longer periods of time and may be more likely to click text ads or generate impressions for CPM ads. If they really like the site, they may tell their friends or come back day after day. These are concepts known as viral marketing or stickiness.
Additionally, webmasters may boost popularity to their website by distributing their branded flash games to other webmasters for free. The reason is that visitors to all these other websites that would never have seen the distributing company's brand now have it right before their eyes. Webmasters are eager for free content that will increase the user's enjoyment of, and time on, their sites. Therefore, they gladly accept the free branded flash games of larger sites. It's a win-win situation. Miniclip.com brought tens of thousands of visitors to their website through this method. Here, a webmaster recounts their experience:
"One of the more successful viral marketing campaigns that i think has been overlooked in this thread is miniclip.com. Back in the early days of the website they made the smart decision to put up a selection of their flash games for download so that other webmasters could download the games and use them on their websites. The games were heavily miniclip.com branded with links back to miniclip all over the place. People then jumped on this and started making "online game websites" using games that were provided for free on miniclip (and other similar websites), the webmasters would then advertise their new websites and drive a lot of traffic to miniclip."
In order to imitate the success of a Miniclip, you need to systematically produce games and submit them to the big gaming hubs, directories, and websites:
It *will* bring you some traffic but don't expect to get thousand of visitors via this way (unless you really submit 10+ developed games per month to the big sites)
Another webmaster confirms this and re-iterates the success of minicip:
he is right ! you have to develop more and more games like miniclip.com
they are i think the best flash gamers over the internet ! and they lets you play online and download the trail version of the games !
The cost of paying a flash game developer to create a completely original flash game from scratch ranges from $200 to $900. Of course, you'll want to mention that they can sell and customize the games for other webmasters too; do so only if price is a consideration. There are sometimes bulk discounts, and it's far cheaper to have a developer brand a game they've already developed. Freelancers (independent contractors that get paid on a job-by-job basis) can be found through guru.com , elance.com , rent-a-coder.com and on flash developer forums like flashkit.com.
Interestingly enough, there are also pre-packaged flash quizzes and games that can be licensed and customized. This is the best option for an up-start with a small budget that wants to rapidly imbue his/her site with content. For instance, some businesses offers a yearly licensing model for branded flash games. The best bet is to work with a company that already has some momentum in the field. For example, Galaxy Graphics lets you choose, license, and personally brand flash games from their large portfolio.
Recently, Orbitz and Lifesavers developed flash games on their websites that are showing to be successful in converting to more sales and greater brand awareness.
Branded flash games are one valuable asset that your budding business should not neglect.
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